DARK AGES AMERICA

This is the Blog for MORRIS BERMAN, the author of "Dark Ages America". It includes current publications and random thoughts about U.S. Foreign Policy, including letters and reactions to publications from others.
A cultural historian and social critic, MORRIS BERMAN is the author of "Wandering God" and "The Twilight of American Culture". Since 2003 he has been a visiting professor in sociology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
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September 03, 2010

A New Meaning for Gettysburg

Dear Friends:

The following essay contains an excerpt from an article that appeared in the the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on August 31, about a casino that is very likely to be built just outside of the Gettysburg battlefield. The essay itself is by Dave Cohen, appearing on the websitepeakwatch.typepad.com/decline_of_the_empire on September 1st. You can draw your own conclusions (though I personally think it's hard to argue with Dave's). [My two cents are in brackets, BTW.]

The Meaning Of Gettysburg

Few people outside Pennsylvania know that for a long time now, there have been plans to build a gambling casino 1/2 mile south of the Gettysburg National Military Park.

The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War, the Union victory in the summer of 1863 that ended General Robert E. Lee's second and most ambitious invasion of the North. Often referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Rebellion", it was the war's bloodiest battle with 51,000 casualties. It also provided President Abraham Lincoln with the setting for his most famous address.

Gettysburg and the surrounding area are as close to Sacred Ground as you can get in America. Yesterday, casino friends and foes testified before the state's Gaming Control Board. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has been covering the story.

The state Gaming Control Board is holding an all-day hearing today on whether a $75 million resort hotel casino should be added to the existing Eisenhower hotel and conference center, just south of the southern border of the Gettysburg National Military Park, where thousands of Union and Confederate troops died in early July 1863.

"NO!" shouted Susan Starr Paddock, leader of No Casino Gettysburg, who said a casino so close to "hallowed" Civil War ground would be a national disgrace. She was supported by Nicholas Redding of the Civil War Preservation Trust, who urged the board to "save the hallowed nature of this ground for future citizens and preserve Gettysburg."

"YES!" said David LeVan, owner of a Gettysburg motorcycle dealership and lead developer, along with Penn National Gaming (which would finance and operate the casino), plus several Adams County and Cumberland Township officials (where the casino would be located), who each stand to get $1 million a year from the casinos, to help them add jobs and hold down taxes.

State Rep. Harry Readshaw, D-Carrick, wasn't here today but did have a statement of support that was read. Mr. Readshaw, who has spent the last 13 years restoring the monuments at the Civil War battlefield, said Mr. LeVan "has assisted me in numerous important ways," including an annual fund-raising motorcycle ride from Harrisburg to the Battlefield Harley Davidson dealership in Gettysburg, which Mr. LeVan owns.

The opponents of the casino showed a video in which author David McCullough, filmmaker Ken Burns, actor Sam Waterston, Susan Eisenhower, grandaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower (who lived here after leaving the presidency) and others urged the board to give the second and final resort casino license to one of three other applicants. [Am I reading this correctly? McCullough et al. are not arguing that there should be no casino, but only that the license should be given to someone else??--!] [This is the end of the excerpt from the newspaper.]

It will be impossible to please everybody in this contentious fight—someone must win and someone must lose. I believe there is a novel solution to this dilemma which transcends petty local disputes:

Put this fucking casino right on the battlefield, preferably where the Union men repulsed Pickett's charge, or even better, on the very ground where Lincoln spoke. Whereas in the past Gettysburg has served as a powerful symbol of our desire to be better than we are, of the desire of the United States to rid itself of the moral stain—the evil—of slavery in which one man "owns" another, we now have an opportunity to invest Gettysburg with a new meaning more fitting to the times we live in.

Let this fucking casino be a powerful symbol to future generations of what an open, running, rancid sewer the United States had become by 2010. It is altogether proper that Gettysburg remain an unwavering emblem of who we are, and what we aspire to. Let us resolve today and henceforth to give a New Meaning to Gettysburg.

[Who are we? A sad collection of clowns. What do we aspire to? Money. How much do we care about our heritage? Zip.]

About Me

Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. During 1982-88 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, the Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992, and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (from the Media Ecology Association) in 2013. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–-The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)–and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and during 2008-9 was a Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City.